I really wanted to love FreeBSD. Growing up in grade school my friend's older brother was a contributor and I thought he was the coolest guy ever. I loved the ethos and I agreed with this post. But practically, I just ran I into too much pain.

- firewall? Lots of pain and hard to find friendly, best practice starter templates. Wherever I looked, people said "it's complicated." After a lot of tinkering and learning I finally got a setup that was pretty safe. (I think.)

- pm2 was buggy on FreeBSD because of some issue with process IDs getting lost. That was pm2's fault, not FreeBSD's. But I still wanted to simply run different processes and keep my logs somewhere. Well, I guess I could write rc.d scripts for that. But keeping logs from the processes started by rc.d scripts? That also appeared to be a world of pain, and wherever I looked for answers people said "it's complicated."

In the end, it was just too much having to re-invent the wheel for common server tasks and I had to say goodbye. It's not you FreeBSD, it's me. I'm just not an OS dev.

> - firewall? […] Wherever I looked, people said "it's complicated." After a lot of tinkering and learning I finally got a setup that was pretty safe. (I think.)

I felt this way about pf when I first got PF going around 2011 for my home router/firewall box. Not saying this is the same for you or anyone else, but my issue was that I was approaching it from the point of view of “I want to configure a home firewall router with PF” instead of “I want to learn the fundamentals of what a firewall does”.

It took me a few more years to get well-versed in all that stuff: the structure of packets, what NAT actually means (what addresses are being translated, why, and where), what's going on in the state table, how to debug when things aren't doing what I expect, etc. Once I did it became much more straightforward to express in my `pf.conf` what I want to do, but you're right that doesn't really help new users.

> Lots of pain and hard to find friendly, best practice starter templates.

FreeBSD does include this, however! It's just implemented using IPFW instead of PF. Check out `firewall_type` key in `rc.conf`: https://cgit.freebsd.org/src/tree/libexec/rc/rc.conf?id=edad...

For a very simple NAT gateway, one could set `firewall_type=simple` and then `firewall_simple_(iif|inet|oif|onet)(_ipv6)?` to configure the ISP-side and internal-side interface names and IPv4 and IPv6 network ranges for each.

For a very easy single-machine firewall, one could set `firewall_type=client` or `firewall_type=workstation` if you want to host anything. For the latter, `firewall_myservices` and `firewall_allowservices` control what ports are enabled and who (other networks/IPs) have access to them

For more details and to see exactly what each option actually does, check out `/etc/rc.firewall` where this is all implemented: https://cgit.freebsd.org/src/tree/libexec/rc/rc.firewall?id=...

> - firewall? Lots of pain and hard to find friendly, best practice starter templates. Wherever I looked, people said "it's complicated." After a lot of tinkering and learning I finally got a setup that was pretty safe. (I think.)

I don't use much FreeBSD these days, but pf (from OpenBSD, I know), is one of the best things since sliced bread.

In my first job I was working for a company selling a third-party vertical software and we were proving support for it. We were using a very expensive symantec vpn with most customers connecting with a 33.3kb phone connection, until we reached the license limits, and there was no money for new licenses. In a pinch, me and a coworker set up a new server with openvpn, freebsd, pf, and a ruby-based dns server that I don't remember anymore, and we grew an order of magnitudes more customers.

It's been more that 20 years, I still don't know how to use firewalls in linux, (there are many, I just pretend they don't exists) but I would still be able to setup a pf firewall if needed. I need to say it again, pf is a joy to use.

My gripe with FreeBSD right now is that I miss something like docker swarm. bhyve is fine but AFAIK it works only on a single host. Give me something that works on a bunch of hosts, and I will come back right away

https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/firewalls/

- firewall?

PF seems to me like pretty much the most well regarded firewall there is - with a nice, sensible DSL for config. If you don't like like it, you can use use IPFW or IPFILTER, which are alternative, built-in, firewall front-ends.

- In the end, it was just too much having to re-invent the wheel for common server tasks

Maybe you have built your routine around a system that have reinvented the wheel? I think FreeBSD knowledge degrades more slowly than that of Linux distros.

- I'm just not an OS dev.

That's how I feel when I enter the chaotic Linux world. Do you think my life revolve around keeping up with this shit? :)

I had similar issues with it. What helps today are LLMs. It’s really a boon to configuring such things. You do it on ace and forget unless that’s your job. Did you try to do what you had wanted back then with a recent LLM?